Whenever I lecture or teach on the road, quilters ask me what sewing machine I use. Until about a year ago, the answer was easy. I had been sewing with the same brand for almost thirty years, first with a mechanical model and then with a mid-level computerized model. I developed a relationship with the manufacturer and even filmed a webisode for one of their websites. I loved those machines, and so I never really compared brands.

The Quilt Patch

A few years ago, I started teaching at my local quilt shop, The Quilt Patch, also known as Bernina of Northern Virginia. Each time I carried my non-Bernina sewing machine into the shop to teach a class, I was faced with a classroom of mostly Berninas. I started to learn about Berninas and I started to covet those Berninas. When the 830 came out (followed closely by the promise of a more affordable 820 without embroidery capabilities), I started to seriously consider converting. Last year in Houston, I visited the Bernina booth and had wonderful discussions with the Bernina professionals. I played with an 830 and learned more about the upcoming 820. That was the moment when I drank the Bernina Kool-Aid.

Fast forward about a year: My, how things have changed!

My New 820

I am now the proud owner of a Bernina 820. I try to put in a few miles every day so that I can learn all about its capabilities. I can’t wait to take the mastery classes!

I am also the new Bernina manager at the Quilt Patch. I’m learning all about Bernina machines as quickly as I can. I go to work full of anticipation and I come home full of new information. There’s so much to learn!

And if this weren’t enough, here’s one more announcement: Bernina has accepted me into their National Artisans Program!  A brand new Artista 730E arrived at my door yesterday. I get to play with that machine for a year, during which I will produce a few products for Bernina and I will put the machine through its paces. I’m really looking forward to playing with the embroidery module.

What a difference a year makes. In future posts, I’ll share what I’m learning about my Berninas. Right now, I have some sewing to do!

I cannot overstate how important it is to get out of Dodge every once in a while. Sometimes you just need a change of venue to spark your productivity and clear your creative palette.

Me, Mary, and Kathy

It’s  been a long year, filled with rough patches and happy surprises. The fact that I’m able to be here, sharing a friend’s hospitality, is a tribute to the power of positive energy. The house where I’m staying is roomy and has been filled with an ever-changing cast of friends and family for the last week.

The trip has been on my calendar for a good six months and I’ve looked forward to it each time deadlines loomed and things looked dark. Getting away doesn’t make everything magically better, but it does allow perspectives to shift and energies to be realigned.

Cut Blocks Ready to Sew

Take productivity for example. Every year I spend some time with friends at the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival. For the past two years, this small group has done a block exchange. I’ve had a really hard time getting around to those blocks this year, despite the fact that I really want the quilt that will result. And so, I packed the fabrics, the pattern, and the tools, and I planned to work on them here. Here’s a shot of all 75 blocks, cut and ready to stitch together. The pattern is from Alex Anderson Classics and is called Holiday Lights.

Five Sample Blocks

My friend Kathy Lincoln has already made this quilt once and was here to guide me through the use of a specialty ruler and a borrowed Bernina. (More about Bernina in a later post!)

All 75 blocks are now sewn and ready for the exchange! I used this long pillow as a small makeshift design wall. How cute are these trees?! Now I think I have to make a pillow to go with the quilt.

Kathy Working Hard

My friend Kathy has been feverishly working on billions and billions (okay, 472) flying geese units for a class she’ll offer at the Quilt Patch during the next session. 

Kathy's Geese

 This shot of the blocks was taken by Mary’s daughter, Katherine McPherson. Check out her work at www.katherinemcphersonphotography.com.

Cyndi Souder, Lynda Prioleau, Kathy Lincoln

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could combine the activities we love and then spend time sharing them with friends?

I’m a big fan of tea. No, not drowning a teabag in a mug of hot water; I mean tea in a china cup with delicate munchies and wonderful friends with whom to share it all.

I’m also a big fan of special clothes. I love clothes, but I have a hard time finding things that I think look good on me while being appropriate. I think Stacy and Clinton (You know who I mean!) would have a field day in my closet.

When my friend Judy Gula of Artistic Artifacts started talking about offering clothing patterns in her shop, I was very interested. I started sewing a very, very, very long time ago by making a pink short sleeved dress with a stand up collar embellished with a floral ribbon. Honestly! I continued to sew until I realized that I liked quiltmaking more. Flat is easier to sew, believe me. Now I think it’s time to revisit that decision and try to find time to make some of my own pieces.

Judy rolled out her new program, which she calls Artistic Couture, a little while ago with a tea and pattern party. Many of us made garments for the occasion and I managed to create a top. The pants and jacket are off the rack, and the top represents more un-sewing than I’ve done on one project for a long time.

The pattern is the Mimosa Top from The Sewing Workshop Collection. It’s sleeveless and comfortable. It should have been really easy to make, but I’m clearly out of practice.  Okay, details. The fabric is a lightweight rayon from Britex in San Francisco, purchased ages ago. Great drape, nice hand. The band that forms the neckline is made from ombre silk (brown to black), pintucked and topstitched — and bought that way from Bohemian Elements last year at the Houston show. The silk wasn’t wide enough, of course, so I had to figure out how to piece it while maintaining the little rows of tucks. Sigh. More ripping commenced. I added length to the front and back and will probably sew the fronts together (eliminating potential gaps and slippage) before I wear it again. All in all, I like it and I’ll use it. And I’ll probably go on to make something else. It was fun.

And, yes, I know that’s the face my grandmother warned against making, lest it freeze that way. Sorry, Nana!

Dye Pots all in a Row

This is the first installment of  a little project I’m working on. I’m not going to give it all away here, but I wanted to share the first few steps.  

To start, I paid a visit to Dharma Trading’s online store and had a wonderful time looking at all of the shirt blanks they offer. I have a tee shirt project idea (more on that in future posts) and I wanted to add my own colors.

If you know me, you’ve probably heard me say that I patronize fabric dyers because it’s a messy job and I don’t feel compelled to dye my own stuff. The pros do a great job and I’m happy to support them. That said, I was feeling particularly DIY and wanted to dye these shirts myself. I called Judy Gula of Artistic Artifacts, who is a good friend and lives right around the corner. She had some dyes mixed and I got to play with them! By the way, if you’re interested in learning to dye your own stuff, Judy teaches this at her shop (Artistic Artifacts Annex) in Alexandria, Virginia. It’s worth the trip!

My husband says I put the A.R. in Art Quilting and I think he’s probably right. And so how does a person with my control-freak, keep-it-organized tendencies dye successfully? Here are a few tips: 

• Plan ahead. Take everything you’ll need. Then pack extra.
• Know what you’re going to put in those dye pots. I wanted to dye lots and lots of stuff, but my time was limited and I remember how grueling it seems to rinse everything once the process is done. I dyed a total of nine shirts and two aprons.
• Collect dye pots with big openings and lids. I hit the Dollar Store a few years ago for these. It’s a motley mix and they take up a lot of precious storage, but it’s worth it on dye days. The open containers are on loan from Judy. Clearly, I need to go shopping for more pots with lids.
• Take tubs or bins to put the dye pots in for your drive home.
• Dye with a friend. It’s more fun and it is the best multi-tasking combination.
• Take rubber gloves. Yes, I know there’s stuff out there that will clean off the dye, but I think prevention is the prudent course here. Oh, make sure you have that dye-removing cleaner for the unexpected splashes.
• Wear clothes you don’t care about. I had to laugh this morning when I opened Robbi Joy Eklow’s book Goddess of the Last Minute to her essay “A Quilter’s Wardrobe.” You must have dye clothes, or what you wear will suffer the consequences.

When I take the shirts out, I’ll post photos and say a little about the process. For now, let me say that I wanted to play with value rather than throwing in a lot of different colors at once. (What? Is that a hint about what I have planned for these shirts?) Check back. I’ll post the next step soon.

Have you ever been possessed by a project idea? I mean so totally consumed that you had to make it? Me, too.

Most of my sewing time is spent making samples or art quilts. I don’t make bags. I have lots of bags and, truth be known, I prefer leather bags. That’s why it was such a surprise to find a bag pattern that haunted me.

Bali Bags Pattern by Aunties Two

I was in the WebFabrics booth in Houston last year. Carly always has such beautiful things and I always look. This time, she had a new line of patterns designed to work with the Bali Pops that took the quilt world by storm at Market the year before.  These patterns, by Aunties Two, use the 2 1/2″ strips in Bali Pops (you could use Jelly Rolls by Moda) and cotton clothesline to construct bags and boxes. I saw the pattern, saw the sample, and began to buy. Carly’s a great marketer! Even though I already had some Bali Pops at home, the feeding frenzy had begun and I had to pick up a few more. Why not one of each?

If I was going to make one of these beauties, I had to make one I’d actually use. I thought about going with all black, but I love batiks and decided to throw caution to the wind and embrace my inner color diva. I like red and so I decided to go with Strawberry Fields.  This combination had some orange and just a little purple. What more could I want?

What more could I want?! Time to sew and time to play with fabric. My quilt guild’s spring retreat was the perfect time to try this pattern. I sat next to my good friend Kathy Lincoln. Kathy teaches this bag class at the Quilt Patch, the same shop where I teach art quilting. (Quilt guilds, she also offers this as a workshop!) If you’re in the DC Metro area, think about signing up. She’s offering the class again in January. Oh, and the Quilt Patch has a lovely selection of Bali Pops in the Batik Room.

I got out my 30-year-old mechanical Pfaff in case the clothesline proved hard to sew and I got busy. I sat next to Kathy, who guided me the whole way through the process. I could have done it with only the pattern, but a good teacher makes all the difference.

I sewed all of the strips together, end-to-end, not worrying about the color arrangement. Then I covered the clothesline, making a very, very long snake-like cording. Last, I used the widest zigzag my machine would do to sew the cording into a coil.

Easy, peasy! Of course, I had to change the pattern slightly by adding leather handles rather than fabric ones.

Did you notice that the sides of the bag in the pattern picture are straight and mine are angled out? I call this a design accident. The sides are meant to be straight, but I wasn’t very good at following directions and this was the result. I like it.

And so the next time a pattern calls out to you and won’t shut up, answer the call. I’m glad I did.

So, how does a Kindle Addiction relate to quilting? Read on and I’ll tell you.

For those of you who know me, it will come as no surprise that I am an electronic gizmo junkie. I can’t afford to feed my habit as regularly as I’d like or I’d have an iTouch, a Blackberry, a better laptop computer…but I digress. The point is I have some toys.

I didn’t realize I was a junkie until one weekend when my husband and I were driving to the outlaws for a visit. We were collaborating on an eBook we’re writing and I found myself defending all of the stuff I had in the front of my Honda Element – plugged in, charging, or in use. My iPod was plugged into the auxiliary jack, playing one of my favorite playlists. My cell phone was charging, my laptop was up and running Word (We were writing, remember?), and I had my Kindle out so that I could see how well one of my PDFs held its format when it was transferred to the Kindle. Maybe I have a little bit of a problem.

Okay, back to the Kindle. I saved for my new Kindle for almost a year. I had a hard time justifying the purchase of an electronic book reader as long as I could simply open a paper book and read it myself. Why spend the money to buy the electronic reader and then spend additional money to buy each book? Oh, but I wanted it. I really, really wanted it. Finally, I made the purchase and waited eagerly for the UPS man to stop at my house. Of course, it arrived while I was out of town teaching at a quilt show!

You may be thinking that you love books and you’d miss the feel of the book in your hand, the intrinsic beauty of words on the page, the instant knowledge of how far you’ve read and how much you have left. The little voice in the back of my head was afraid I’d miss it too. But no. Here’s why I love my Kindle and how it all relates to quilting.

• My one little Kindle will store about 1,500 books. Now I have more room on my shelves for fabric and pretty design books that shouldn’t be read on a screen.
• Kindle books are less expensive than paper books. Most bestsellers are around ten dollars for the Kindle, even those only available in hardback. Some are more expensive, but many are less. In fact, I’m reading some books that were free. That means more money to spend on fabric and paints and thread.
• I can shop for books from my laptop or directly from my Kindle and download them directly to the Kindle within 60 seconds. There are over 300,000 books, newspapers, magazines, and blogs available. No need to drive to a book store and interrupt sewing time.
• I don’t need my computer or a wireless network to download a book. I can shop directly from the Kindle from anywhere there is a 3G network for mobile phones. While I’m waiting for my flight to a quilt show or I’m in a hotel room after giving a lecture or workshop, I can always find something I want to read.

I’ll take my Kindle to the Houston show this year and I’ll be able to carry it with me in my purse (because it’s lightweight), read whenever I’m on sensory overload and need a break (because it has an incredibly long battery life before you need to recharge), and shop for new books right there in the Convention Center (assuming there’s a 3G network there).

Now if I could just get the Kindle to clean my house, I’d have so much more time…

What a weekend this has  been!

It started in Williamsburg with the Colonial Piecemakers’ Quilt Guild. I had such a good time with these quilters! On Friday, we spent all day playing with Tsukineko Inks. We used the Fantastix applicators to learn how to control the ink and then we mixed the inks with aloe gel to see what kinds of effects we could get. We colored in commercially available black-and-white fabrics and we explored rubber stamps and traced designs. It was great to spend the day with such talented artists!

On Saturday, I started the day at the guild meeting. I’ve never seen such a show and tell. This guild is working through a year-long UFO challenge and the first round of finished quilts was literally a parade around the room.  Impressive. I presented my lecture, “Overcoming Quilter’s Block,” and then we had a full house for my “Trees” workshop. I love seeing all of the different results that can come from the same pattern.

Back home again, my husband and I went into D.C. to see the cherry blossoms. I’m always wowed when I see all of that lovely color in a metropolitan setting. And did I mention the people? Apparently, today was a great day to visit D.C. I know this because there were more people than there were blossoms! I was happy to see so many people enjoying the beautiful day. And you’ll be pleased to know that I did not correct the tourist who pointed to the Washington Monument and exclaimed, “Look! There’s that pencil building or whatever you call it!”

And so, the weekend is coming to a close. I’ve put some miles on the truck and I’ve met some wonderful quilters. I’ve seen some sights and I’ve had some fun. Now it’s time to rest up for the next adventure — or whatever you call it!

This blog post is a quick hit-and-run entry that poses a question and a possible answer. I’d like to hear your thoughts on the subject.

To you workaholics, here’s my conundrum: why do we put off doing the fun things in favor of doing the hard or unpleasant tasks – even though the fun stuff is on our to-do lists and has deadlines? I’ll wait while you ponder this. Imagine that I am humming the theme to Jeopardy…

Seriously, this is an important question. I’ve talked to other productive, relaxation-challenged people and they share this malady. So, take your time and think on it. The world would be a better place if some of us could have more fun. Okay, I mean if I could have more fun.

Give up? Okay, here’s my theory. I think I feel guilty when I do something fun. How twisted is that?! Today, I decided to reacquaint myself with my sewing machine. Those of you on Facebook may have seen that intention in my status update. I love my sewing machine. I love to sew. I am, after all, a professional quilter and that does involve sewing. And so, why was there a layer of stuff accumulating on top of my sewing machine?

I did get to sew today. I put the binding on a quilted laptop case I designed out of fabric I love, love, love. The project has been languishing for over a month, gathering dust and hurling guilt darts at me whenever I walk by. I have wanted to work on this ever since I bought the fabric; that’s the heck of it. While I worked on it today, I thought of all the other things I “should” have been doing.

So…a new resolution. Guilt is unproductive. In fact, it’s the enemy of productivity. A happy quilter (me, after doing something fun for just a little while) is a more productive quilter.

And so, I resolve to do something fun every day. I guess I need to make sure there’s more fun stuff on my to-do list. Hmm, where’s my pen?

I’m blogging here in Hampton, Virginia, at the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival. This is a Mancuso show, which means the show is organized and well-run, and everyone knows what to expect. Well, everyone except the vendors.

The quilters expected beautiful quilts, and we weren’t disappointed. But the vendors had to have doubts when they set up their wares in preparation for the thousands of quilters who attend this show each year. After an informal survey, I’m happy to report that the quilting economy seems to be fine. Fabric is selling. Patterns and books are selling. Threads, trims, and embellishments are selling. I even visited with a quilter who bought a longarm machine!

Sure, we’re watching our pennies. But we’re also quilters. We’re buying what we need to continue making the quilts that comfort others. We’re buying the fabric and kits that make our own hearts sing. We’re generating positive energy and we’re putting it out into the universe. At least for the duration of this show, we’re not dwelling on the bad news from the outside. We’re thankful to be here, thankful to be quilters, and thankful to be part of this community. If only the rest of the world’s challenges could be addressed so simply.

Left to right: Doris, Dian, Kathy, Mary, and Cyndi

That’s where Lesley’s new book comes in.  She starts out by telling you about Lutradur — what it is, how it’s made, and why it’s so special. Then she describes 27 things you can do with Lutradur from adding color and pattern (think of the fun things you can do with paint, inks, and dyes), screening and printing, glueing and fusing, needle felting, and even using heat to cut and distort it.

After the techniques, Lesley shares a broad array of projects made by a variety of fiber artists. There’s a project for every taste and temperament, incorporating the techniques in the earlier section of the book. Want to stamp and stencil? It’s in there. Want to create three-dimensional objects with Lutradur? It’s in there. It’s all in there. I can’t wait to try some of these wonderful ideas.

And she makes a suggestion that I really appreciate: she says to pick a new technique for which you already have the tools and try it on one of the pieces of Lutradur included in the back of the book. Yup! The book includes one sheet each of two different weights of Lutradur. And so once you’ve bought the book, you can actually play with the Lutradur without any additional purchases.

Even with the Lutradur in the book, you’ll eventually want more. I recommend visiting Artistic Artifacts’ website for either the 70g- or 100g-weight fiber. To buy the book, visit the Favorite Things page on my website and follow the link. The book is also available from Artistic Artifacts (in person in Alexandria, VA, or online) and the Quilt Patch in Fairfax, VA.

Have some fun with this new mystery fiber. And send me pictures of what you do! I’d love to see it.